Not wild about weeds at Chelsea
I’VE always wanted to go to the Chelsea Flower Show, but charging people to look at concrete, weeds and rusty metal is the Emperor’s New Clothes. If I want to view such a spectacle, I can just hot foot it to any number of rundown plots, which can also throw in a rusty bike and trampoline with a few springs missing. Why do gardens need a theme? They should be areas of beauty that exist in their own right, not an expression of a woke subject. Too often the designer has to explain the concept to a TV presenter who is either equally woke or has to dredge their vocabulary for something positive to say.
Any gardener will tell you weeds aren’t difficult to grow. Bees and bugs are not lost for nectar in a cultivated garden.
J. GREEN, Burton upon Trent, Staffs.
WEEDS are, indeed, our friends and we need to move away from sterile gardens. Let wildlife and nature have its way.
OWEN HOLLIFIELD, Gilfach, Caerphilly.
TO CREATE the show gardens at Chelsea has required all manner of earth-moving equipment to dig trenches, concrete being laid, granite slabs requiring a crane to be moved and holes needing to be dug to transplant mature trees. All of this has had to be transported to London. Can anyone tell me what is the carbon footprint for this extravaganza?
BRIAN CLARE, Welling, Kent. IF THE trend at Chelsea is rusty corrugated iron and rubble surrounded by ‘designer’ weeds, in the future it should be held at Steptoe & Son’s scrap yard.
We won’t need garden centres, horticultural magazines, gardening TV shows and experts any more.
BRIAN BEST, High Wycombe, Bucks.
THEY are charging £30 a clump for designer dandelions at Chelsea. You can have them free from my garden.
JOYCE CROSS, Isleworth, West London. WHAT an insult to every garden lover to suggest we allow weeds to flourish and slugs and snails to run riot. You only have to look at the once cultivated, but now neglected, overgrown and weed-infested town centre roundabouts.
What greater pleasure is there than plants and summer blooms lovingly displayed in a well-kept garden? The Centrepoint show garden at Chelsea featuring a demolished house where nature has taken over could be a candidate for the Turner prize. I am dismayed that it has been awarded a gold medal. No one will bother visiting Chelsea in the future just to look at a display of nettles and brambles.
JANE GRUMMITT, Shavington, Cheshire.